The present invention relates in general to apparatus and methods for separating biological fluids, such as blood or blood components or other fluids, into one or more components.
The separation of biological fluid such as whole blood and blood components into its constituent components for various applications is well known. Many commercially available separation systems are based on principles of centrifugation, which separates the fluid components according to density. Various devices and systems are known that employ centrifugal separation of blood or blood components including the CS-3000®, Amicus® and ALYX® separators marketed by Baxter Healthcare Corporation of Deerfield, Ill., the Spectra® and Trima® separators by Gambro BCT of Lakewood, Colo., the AS104 from Fresenius Homecare of Redmond, Wash., and the V-50 and other models from Haemonetics Corporation of Braintree, Mass. Various centrifuge devices are also disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 6,325,775, Published PCT Application Ser. Nos. PCT/US02/31317; PCT/US02/31319; PCT/US03/33311 and PCT/US03/07944, and U.S. Published Patent Application Ser. Nos. 20020094927 and 20020077241. Each of these patent and patent applications are hereby incorporated by reference herein.
Although centrifugal blood separator devices are thus well known, efforts continue to develop devices that are smaller, lighter, more portable, versatile and/or efficient in the separation and collection of one or more different components of blood or other biological fluids.